92 OUR ROCK-GARDEN 



store, or to verify by comparison. It is, we need 

 scarcely say, the essence of such an arrangement 

 that it should be in the hands of a curator at once 

 enthusiastic and accurate. 1 In one museum which 

 we have visited, the plants are in a corridor between 

 the entrance and the main building, the result being 

 that mischievous boys shift the labels about, and the 

 educational value of the collection is hopelessly 

 spoilt, it being entirely useless to make the acquaint- 

 ance in the morning of what the label calls a poppy, to 

 find that later on it is an ox-eye, and towards evening 

 has become a foxglove. Plants can' be so readily 

 sent in tin canisters or boxes that we give our- 

 selves the pleasure of forwarding to curators speci- 

 mens for their water-bottles, thus introducing the 

 alkanets and such-like scarcer plants to hundreds 

 who might otherwise never come across them. 

 Another interesting Spring plant which we welcome 

 in our rock-garden is the Star of Bethlehem the 

 Ornithogalum umbellatum. Though fairly established 

 in pasture-land in some parts of England, it is not 

 really a native. Its large white flowers, clustered 

 together at the ends of the long stems, are very 



1 Amongst a number of gatherings that we took to one of 

 these museum collections were specimens of chamomile and 

 ox-eye daisy. Both were put by the curator into one bottle 

 and labelled " Corn feverfew, Chrysanthemum segetum." 

 They could not both be feverfew. They were neither of 

 them feverfew. If they had been feverfew they would not 

 have been Chrysanthemum segetum. 



